hintofsarcasm
am i still ill? Archive for January, 2006
January 31, 2006 at 13:08 · Filed under Entertainment
Yup, it’s come around again.
Time for the academy to award the movies with the biggest budgets with little gold statues and to leave out the great little independent films that actually have some heart, and a storyline.
Naturally, Brokeback Mountain has cleared up with the most nominations of any film, including Best Picture, hardly a surprise. Although the Screen Actors Guild snubbed the movie, this was unlikely to happen at the Oscars, afterall, it is virtually run by the movie distributors. Not being nominated for an Oscar would kill DVD sales.
Personally, I think that Crash was the better film of 2005 and deserves to get the Best Picture gong, for which it has also been nominated, though only through lack of alternate choice.
The film of 2005 that I think should have been nominated and presented with the Best Picture award is Woody Allen’s Match Point, though saying that, I am yet to see Munich, which, from what I have heard, could potentially win my (non-existant) vote.
With regard to the Best Director nominations, the obvious ones are there, Spielberg (for Munich, not WotW, gladly), Ang Lee (for Brokeback Mountain, of course), but in my opinion, the obvious winner should be David Cronenberg for History of Violence. Cronenberg kept the story enthralling and full of doubt about what was going to happen next, absolutely brilliant.
You can read the full list of nominations, here, at the official Oscars website.
January 30, 2006 at 13:08 · Filed under Politics
Google’s censorship over the Chinese edition of its search engine has come into force.
For those who didn’t already know, last week Google decided to censor its site in compliance with strict government rules on free-speech so that it could finally be viewable in China, after many searches being blocked almost since Googles inception.
Google argues that it would be better for them to censor and be allowed to remain online in the country, that to pull out altogether.
Free-speech is almost non-existant in the worlds most vastly populated nation.
Bloggers have even been jailed, for blogging against the official government line or for being outspoken about state thuggery.
So, if you want to see for yourself how Google has turned itself into a tool to aid oppression, compare these two searches. One uses Google image search, US edition, the other uses Google image search, Chinese edition. Guess which one is which.
http://images.google.cn/images?q=tiananmen
http://images.google.com/images?q=tiananmen
January 29, 2006 at 14:16 · Filed under Anything Else?
Well, it’s another Sunday afternoon.
One Sunday every month, I have to work.
It’s a boring task, as generally, there is nothing to do.
My job is to be here in case there is an incident.
Server goes down, telephones stop working, printer blows up, etc. You know, the usual ‘issues’ that people without the word ’support’ in their job title are incapable of dealing with.
But, since so few people actually work on a Sunday, there is hardly ever a problem.
I bring in my laptop or portable DVD player and sit here watching movies all day. Cushty.
What I miss, however, is the Great British Sunday roast, normally enjoyed every Sunday, either with my family, or Lauras family. It’s a British tradition.
Turkey, Beef, Pork or Lamb with all the trimmings, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, roast potatoes, new potatoes and not to mention, Yorkshire puddings and gravy.
It simply cannot be beat.
Fuck ‘the great American hamburger’
Fuck ‘the amazing Italian pizza’
A British Sunday lunch will win each and every time.
But, I don’t get to have it whilst I’m in work.
In fact, I rarely eat when I’m in work on a Sunday. I can’t usually be bothered walking into the city centre to get anything, even if it is only 5 minutes away.
The reason being, when I do get there, what is my choice?
Burger King, McDonalds or a shitty tuna sandwich from the newsagents that has been there, on the counter next to the till since at least Friday morning, if not before.
But now, I’ve discovered an alternative.
Ring-a-Roast
They will deliver a full roast dinner, with the meat (or nut cutlet for you veggies) of your choice, anywhere in Cardiff.
The prices aren’t too bad, considering if I had a pizza delivered, it would be about the same price.
I’ve decided to try it out this afternoon,
Roast turkey
served with bacon & sausage roll, sage & onion stuffing,
new and roast potatoes, gravy, peas & carrots
Sounds great. I hope it lives up to my expectations.
Update 16:39
Well, it came, in good time too.
Overall, it gets high marks. Obviously, it isn’t quite like mum’s roasts, simply because everyone is used to their own family style of cooking it and everyone is slightly different.
Some mix the vegetable water to make the gravy, others put marmite in the gravy, others don’t.
Some steam their vegetables, some boil them, etc.
One thing is for sure though, I shan’t have to miss a Sunday roast again just because i’m working.
January 27, 2006 at 15:39 · Filed under Morrissey
The South Wales Echo has covered this mornings ticket rush in a small article;
Eager Morrissey fans bombarded St David’s Hall’s box office and internet ticket agents as his Cardiff show sold out in an hour today.
Tickets to see the former Smiths frontman at the Cardiff venue on Monday, May 15, went on sale at 9am today.
More than 200 tickets were sold on the internet in the first 10 minutes.
All of the general sale tickets, including those sole by internet ticket agents, went before 10am. The rest of the tickets were kept back for Friends of St David’s Hall.
This is unsurprising. Ticketmaster were sold out by about 9:03am. See, by about 9:10.
I was very lucky to have gotten hold of those standing tickets from Ticketline UK, since it was purely curiosity that made me call them. I didn’t even know there were going to be standing tickets, as far as I was aware, it was seating only.
Plus, Jo F talks about ‘jammed phone lines’, I got through first time, as if the phone line was there just for me. Just lucky I suppose.
Anyway. I have 4 spare, seated, tickets.
The reason I got such goods seats (Tier 11, Row F, Seats 27-30) was because I have to have been the first person, on Ticketmaster at least, to have bought tickets. I was refreshing the page constantly from 8:55am, until finally, the drop down box to select how many tickets I wanted appeared. All went smoothly from then on. No problems at all.
If anybody wants to buy these tickets, I’d be glad to oblige.
(Though I shall speak to Jo first, as she has already expressed an interest)
January 27, 2006 at 10:54 · Filed under Morrissey
8, in fact.
The tickets actually went on sale, on Ticketmaster, by my count, at 8:57. But hell. I’m not complaining.
Ticketmaster & See, the main online ticket sales sites had all seating tickets.
I bought 4. Best seats in the house. Tier 11. Seated in direct line of sight of the stage.
When I got hold of a seating plan, however, I noticed that there was space for ’stalls’ in front of the stage.
I wanted to get my hands on these, but Ticketmaster nor See had any listing of them whatsoever.
So, at 9:30, I called my local ticket office, Ticketline UK. They did indeed sell standing tickets!
Yes!
So, I bought a further 4.
No skin off my nose, somebody will want to buy those seated tickets from me.
I’ve not been to a gig in St Davids Hall before, so I wasn’t too sure of the size of it and how close we would actually be, should we choose to stand.
I checked out Google Image search and found a picture, it looks quite small, quaint, and ultimately, this will make the gig quite intimate. I’m glad I bought standing tickets now.
Roll on 15th May. I have booked the day off work, so will have the whole day to prepare for it and get there early. The doors open at 7:30, but I’m planning to get there around 4/5pm to get as close to the stage as possible.
The main thing is, I have tickets to see Morrissey!
What a great day 
January 25, 2006 at 15:56 · Filed under Anything Else?
Translation: Happy Saint Dwynwen’s day!
For those of you that aren’t in the know, St Dwynwen’s day is Welsh Valentines day.
Many Welsh natives celebrate it on the 25th January instead of, or as well as, St Valentines Day.
The story goes that Dwynwen lived in the 5th Century AD and she fell in love with a young man named Maelon.
Her father refused to allow her to marry Maelon, for whatever reason, so she prayed to God for her to forget her love for him.
God sent down an angel bearing a poition for Maelon to drink. After drinking this potion, Maelon turns to ice.
As well as receiving the potion, Dwynwen also receives 3 requests from God.
The first one she uses to have Maelon released.
The second she asks that, through her, God look after all true lovers.
And finally, that she remains unmarried. At which point, she then retreats to the solitude of Llanddwyn Island off the west coast of Anglesey to become a hermit.
Quite a moving story, ahem.
But, I do find Welsh folklore rather interesting, being a real patriot and all.
Naturally, S4C, the Welsh language TV channel, are celebrating with a string of romatically themed programmes airing tonight.
January 20, 2006 at 10:51 · Filed under Morrissey
The tickets for Morrissey’s upcoming UK tour went on sale today, London gigs only though.
The tour starts in April, to promote the new album, due to be released in March, Ringleader of the Tormentors.
I decided to take a look, to see how it went, by ‘test buying’ from Ticketmaster and Seetickets, just to see what type of demand we’re going to get next week when the other 27 or so dates go on sale.
Well, all started off well. Both sites were loading normally at 08:55.
08:58: Same response. Site’s both loading quickly, but obviously, still saying tickets on sale at 9am.
09:00: I refresh both pages and this is what I get from Seetickets.
It’s totally fallen over due to the demand.
Ticketmaster is no better. Very slow response times.
Finally, Ticketmaster refreshes, and I get the opportunity to select how many tickets I would like, 1-4.
Looks like if I had really been wanting to buy them, I may have just got them.
09:10: Seetickets has been showing the same error message for the last 10 minutes.
So, I go to their homepage, they have lightened it heavily to compensate for the huge amount of traffic that they must be receiving.
It looks like it’s not just Morrissey tickets that have gone on sale at 9am.
Other popular artists such as Richard Ashcroft & The Editors also appear to have been released, obviously generating a lot of interest.
09:16: Seetickets are sold out. As are Ticketmaster. That’s it. It’s all over.
I imagined it would be a little manic trying to get tickets to the London gigs and am now hoping that it won’t be as difficult for the regional ones. There are 27 or so, afterall.
Although, they are all in small venues which could add to the asperity.
What I shall take from this experience however, is that I should not rely solely on the two biggest online ticket retailers. I shall source other, less well known ticket websites to open up as tabs in my browser, and attempt to use them to get my desired allocation in the event See and Ticketmaster aren’t able to provide.
Wish me luck!
January 17, 2006 at 17:48 · Filed under Morrissey
NME have confirmed the entire lineup of UK gigs that Morrissey is set to play to promote his new album, Ringleader of the tormentors.
This includes a date in none other than my home city of Cardiff.
May 15th at St Davids Hall.
For many years I have been dreaming of the day that I find out my idol is coming here, and now that it has come.
It’s a mixture of emotions.
Shock, excitement and awe are just a few words to describe it.
From memory, the last time that Morrissey did a gig in Wales was with The Smiths in 1986 at the Newport Centre.
The full lineup is;
Salford Lowry (April 18)
Llandudno NW Theatre (19)
Leeds Town Hall (20)
Aberdeen Music Hall (22)
Stirling Albert Halls (23)
Dundee Caird Hall (25)
Greenock Town Hall (26)
Glasgow Academy (27)
Whitehaven Civic (29)
Gateshead Sage (30)
Sheffield City Hall (May 3)
Grimsby Auditorium (4)
Manchester Apollo (6)
Manchester Opera House (7)
Manchester Bridgewater (8)
Halifax Victoria Hall (10)
Blackburn King Georges (11)
Liverpool Philharmonic (12)
London Palladium (14)
Cardiff St Davids (15)
Reading Hexagon (17)
Portsmouth Guildhall (19)
Birmingham Symphony Hall (20)
London Palladium (21)
Truro Hall For Cornwall (23)
Cheltenham Town Hall (24)
Oxford New Theatre (25)
Kings Lynn Corn Exchange (27)
London Palladium (28)
Tickets go on sale this Friday (20th) for the London gigs and the next Friday (27th) for all other gigs, at 9am. Get there quick, I don’t expect the tickets to be around for long. Prices have yet to be released, but I expect them to be around the £30-35 mark.
http://www.ticketmaster.co.uk
http://www.seetickets.com
Update: I have decided that I shall also be going to the Cheltenham gig on the 24th May.
Hell, why not? It’s only an hour away and £15 on the train.
Morrissey twice in one month. Jesus christ, the month of May is going to rock!
January 16, 2006 at 15:47 · Filed under News
A report has emerged that court summons will be delivered to Michael Barrymore, whilst he is in the Celebrity Big Brother house.
I haven’t been watching the series, simply because it doesn’t deserve any of my attention.
But, I cannot seem to go one day without something cropping up on one of my subscribed RSS feeds about it.
Since I haven’t been watching it, I haven’t felt the need to post about it. But this story has really made me sit up and shake my head in disbelief.
Stuart Lubbock was found dead in quiz show host Michael Barrymore’s swimming pool in 2001.
Not enough evidence was ever found to convict Barrymore of any involvement in his death.
In 2004, Lubbocks father, Terry, sued Barrymore for £100,000. Apparently they had come to this sum based on Stuarts earnings.
Fair enough, he did leave behind two young daughters.
Today, Terry Lubbock & his solicitor have been back to court to a private prosecution against Mr Barrymore.
Surely whilst the proposed defendant is participating in a national television program is not the best time to bring a prosecution against him?
I fail to see how this will do the Lubbocks’ case any good at all.
The channel running the programme, Channel4 will lap this up. It’ll push their ratings up, thus increasing their adverstising revenues and Barrymore will be synonymous with being ‘the guy who got endicted on live television’.
You really couldn’t make some of this stuff up. It’s getting like an episode of Eastenders.
- MP acts like cat, makes fool out of self, should resign.
- Rock star wears Gorilla hair coat, could be jailed.
- Anti-bullying ambassador bullied by housemates.
However disbelieving I am over these revalations, I still shan’t be watching the programme on television, still it is not worthy of my time.
January 12, 2006 at 14:15 · Filed under Technology
After reading today about the launch of Sky’s new broadband movie & sport download service, available free to Sky customers, I decided to take them up on the offer.
Who wouldn’t think the idea of being able to download hit movies legally, for free wasn’t a good one?
Admittedly, the installation was a little long-winded.
I don’t use Windows Media player, so I only had installed what came with SP2, version 9?
I was forced to upgrade to 10. OK, fairs fair. Not a big deal.
Then after that further DRM updates were required, OK, fine.
The layout is clean, crisp and pleasing to the eye. Very professional.
The list of available movies was impressive, basically everything that is currently showing on the 11 Sky Movie channels, available to download and watch at the touch of a button instead of waiting for the next showing on the TV.
So, I set about downloading possibly Jim Carreys biggest flop, The Cable Guy. Don’t blame me, I haven’t seen it before and I like Jim, I’m curious.
It’s quite surprising that the movie, encoded at 860kbps has to be downloaded in its entirety before it can be viewed. This particular film is 471MB in size.
No problem, I think to myself, 10MB connection, 461MB can be done in less than 15 minutes or so.
Or so I thought.
The download didn’t start off too well, around about 4KB/s, periodically jumping to around 44KB/s before losing it again. Considering my connection can do >1000KB/s, this made me scratch my head a little.
After about 15 minutes, it had gotten no faster. To download movies at that rate will definitely not implore many people use this service over illegal P2P services.
I couldn’t figure out why it was so slow, and it was almost time for me to call it a night, so the Sky by Broadband program was terminated and I went about my business, Gmail being my first stop, naturally.
I like to monitor my bandwidth at all times, what is uploading and what is downloading at any one time, it lulls me into a sense of security, like I have complete control over my PC. So I run a program called ‘Dumeter‘. It sits just above my clock in the bottom right hand corner of my screen and it displays how fast my NIC is currently downloading and what it is uploading.
Although I had no programs open other than the Firefox browser, my upload rate was around 10KB/s and download rate 30KB/s. Very odd, was my first thought.
So, I open up the command prompt and use netstat -o to view all currently open connections.
Showing in there are connections to other clients, localised to the UK. No servers, just clients.
I match the PID’s that are showing in the command window to a the PID of a program running in the background from the Windows task manager called ‘Kservice.exe’, a program that I am unfamiliar with. This is unusual as I like to be acquainted with all processes that are running on my machines, nothing should be running if I don’t know what it is.
A quick Google of the process name brought up results that to be honest, I was expecting.
This is part of Sky by Broadband. I assumed that it had not shut down properly, so was therefor still downloading my movie selection.
Terminating the application worked fine. All traffic stopped and dropped to zero, as expected.
After poking around I found that KService was setup as a Windows service, set to start at boot. Something that as far as I was aware, I had not agreed to. Not explicitly anyway.
It is looking more and more likely that Sky by Broadband uses P2P functions to deliver its content.
A quick scan of the terms and conditions at the Sky by Broadband website almost confirms this;
7. Uploading Content
If you download and save content to your computer system (a “File”), during the license period for the relevant File, we may upload parcels of content from the File from your computer system for the purpose of transferring Files to other users of the Service.
It is now that the plot begins to thicken.
I decided to install the Sky by Broadband client again, to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything telling me about the P2P aspect of the program.
I came across this little gem, quite incriminating, don’t you think?
No, you aren’t mistaken. Point 7, the only thing that even comes to admitting that P2P methods are used is mysteriously omitted.
The license agreement that all users are agreeing to are flawed, seriously flawed.
BSkyB are installing programs onto customers computers that have not been authorised.
The transfer side of the software appears to have been made by a company called ‘Kontiki‘.
Their company slogan is to ‘Distribute digital media faster and more securely while reducing video content delivery costs’.
Their clients include the BBC, I assume this is for their iMP that is currently in testing.
In essence, Sky have created a program that makes you think that you are downloading content directly from them, but really, it is a P2P system.
A P2P system that does not close when you exit the program but continues to share files and continues to eat into your bandwidth.
A P2P system that uses programs and methods that have not been implicitly implied in the TOS or T&C and does have major detrimental effects over both system resources and network traffic.
The BBC, with their iMP project have been implicit with their explanation of how the service works. In fact, the second question in their FAQ about the system includes the following line;
iMP uses peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to distribute the programmes via the Internet cost-effectively.
Unfortunately I am not on the iMP trial, so I cannot confirm whether or not it uses the same invasive methods to distribute its content.
For many users, the issue of bandwidth will be extremely relevant.
Many users have ‘capped’ broadband packages, whereby only a certain amount of data can be transferred per month. This amount of data usually combines both uploaded and downloaded data so Sky by Broadband sitting in the background happily transferring Spiderman 2 to Joe Bloggs in Preston may cause Mr N E Other in Portsmouth to go over his monthly allowance without him even knowing that is there doing this.
What I aim to find out;
Why BSkyB not publicise that their ‘by Broadband’ service is actually P2P based?
Why does KService.exe startup at boot?
Why does the service not mention at any point that the KService.exe process will start at boot and thus be constantly using bandwidth?
Why is the point that refers to ‘ocassional uploading’ in the T&C on the install program, missing?
In the same way as Sony were been brought to account over their ‘XCP‘ copyright protection in 2005 by Mark Russinovich of Sysinternals, I am launching the investigative campaign in the hope that Sky will increase the prominence of details about the way that the Sky by Broadband system works and how it will affect the users computer and network/internet connection.
I believe it to be irresponsible of BSkyB to allow users to have their connection to the internet utilised almost constantly without explicitly informing them of this.
I decided to give Sky a chance to field the question that has been burning throughout this investigation.
Are BSkyB openly acknowledging the fact that the Sky by Broadband service continues to act as a peer for other downloaders even when the client has been closed?
The answer is no. They are not.
Q: If I was to close down Sky by Broadband, does all downloading and uploading cease?
Firstly, the representative fed me something about having to be connected at the time whilst I was downloading. I don’t think she quite understood the question.
I reiterated the question and was put on hold for some 2 minutes.
When she came back to me, she answered;
No. If you close Sky by Broadband it does not continue to work.
This is untrue.
Either BskyB are not telling their first-line support the methods of the service, or they are intently obscuring it.
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